Peter Thiel's data-mining company Palantir wins $7M NIH contract

The National Institutes of Health awarded Palantir Technologies a three-year, $7 million contract to support its health research.

Palantir, a software company that builds big data platforms, was co-founded by billionaire investor Peter Thiel and former PayPal employees in 2004, according to Bloomberg. Under the new contract, Palantir will provide software for the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and its related agencies.

Scientists at the associated NIH centers will be able to use Palantir's software to combine proprietary and public research data into one interface, including screening, genomics and other biological data.

"NCATS' mission is to get more treatments to patients more quickly," Andrew Girvin, PhD, head of biomedical research and development at Palantir, said in a news release. "By bringing together disparate data into one interface, researchers will soon benefit from greater insights in a fraction of the time."